Class War in Dublin

Published:Severnaya PravdaNo. 23, August 29, 1913;Nash PutNo. 5, August 30, 1913.

      Signed:V..

      Published according to theSevernaya Pravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages332-336.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

InDublin, the capital of Ireland—a city of a not highly industrial
type, with a population of half a million—the class struggle, which
permeates the whole life of capitalist society everywhere, has become
accentuated to the point of class war. The police have positively gone
wild; drunken policemen assault peaceful workers, break into houses,
torment the aged, women and children. Hundreds of workers (over 400) have
been injured andtwo killed—such are the casualties of this
war. All prominent workers’ leaders have been arrested. People are thrown
into prison for making the most peaceful speeches. The city is like an
armed camp.

Whathas happened? How could such a war have flared up in a peaceable,
cultured, civilised free state?

Irelandis something of a British Poland, only rather more like Galicia
than the Poland represented by Warsaw, Lodz and Dombrowski. National
oppression and Catholic reaction have turned the proletarians of this
unhappy country into paupers, the peasants into toilworn, ignorant and dull
slaves of the priesthood, and the bourgeoisie into a phalanx, masked by
nationalist phrases, of capitalists, of despots over the workers; finally,
the administration has been turned into a gang accustomed to every kind of
violence.

Atthe present moment the Irish nationalists (i.e., the Irish
bourgeoisie) are the victors. They are buying up the lands of the English
landlords; they are getting nationalself-government(the famous
Home Rule for which such a long and stubborn struggle has been going on
between Ire land and England); they will freely govern “their own”
country jointly with “their own” Irish priests.

Well,this Irish nationalist bourgeoisie is celebrating its
“national” victory, its maturity in “affairs of state” by declaring a
war to the death on the Irish labour movement.

AnEnglish Lord-Lieutenant lives in Dublin, but in fact he has less
power than the Dublin capitalist leader, a certain Murphy, publisher of theIndependent(“Independent”—my eye!), principal shareholder and
director of the Dublin tramways, and a shareholder in many capitalist
enterprises in Dublin. Murphy has declared, on behalf of all the Irish
capitalists, of course, that he is ready to spend three-quarters of a
million pounds (nearly seven million rubles) to destroy the Irish trade
unions.

Andthese unions have begun to develop magnificently. The Irish
proletariat, awakening to class-consciousness, is pressing the Irish
bourgeois scoundrels engaged in celebrating their “national” victory. It
has found a talented leader in the person of ComradeLarkin,
Secretary of the Irish Transport Workers’ Union. Larkin is a remarkable
speaker, a man of seething Irish energy, who has performed miracles among
the unskilled workers—that mass of the British proletariat which in
Britain is so often cut off from the advanced workers by the cursed
petty-bourgeois, liberal, aristocratic spirit of the British skilled
worker.

Anew spirit bas been aroused in the Irish workers’ unions. The
unskilled workers have brought unparralleled animation into the trade
unions. Even the women have begun to organise—a thing hitherto unknown in
Catholic Ireland. So far as organisation of the workers is concerned Dublin
looks like becoming one of the foremost towns in the whole of Great
Britain. The country that used to be typified by the fat, well-fed Catholic
priest and the poor, starving, ragged worker who wore his rags even on
Sunday because he could riot afford Sunday clothes, that country, though it
bears a double and triple national yoke, has begun to turn into a country
with an organised army of the proletariat.

Well,Murphy proclaimed a crusade of the bourgeoisie against Larkin and
“Larkinism”. To begin with, 200 tramwaymen were dismissed in order to
provoke a strike during the exhibition andembitterthe whole
struggle. The TransportWorkers’ Union declared a strike and demanded the reinstatement of the
discharged men. Murphy engineered lock-outs. The workers retaliated by
downing tools. War raged all along the line. Passions flared up.

Larkin—incidentally,he is the grandson of the famous Larkin executed
in 1867 for participating in the Irish liberation movement—delivered
fiery speeches at meetings. In these speeches he pointed out that the party
of the English bourgeois enemies of Irish Home Rule was openly calling for
resistance to the government, was threatening revolution, was organising
armed resistance to Home Rule and with absolute impunity was flooding the
country with revolutionary appeals.

Butwhat the reactionaries, theEnglishchauvinists Car son,
Londonderry and Bonar Law (the English Purishkeviches, the nationalists who
are persecuting Ireland), may do the proletarian socialist may not. Larkin
was arrested. A meeting called by the workers was banned.

Ireland,however, is not Russia. The attempt to suppress the right of
assembly evoked a storm of indignation. Larkinhad to betried. At
the trial Larkin became the accuser and, in effect, put Murphy in the
dock. By cross-questioning witnesses Larkin proved that Murphy had had long
conversations with the Lord-Lieutenant on the eve of his, Larkin’s,
arrest. Larkin declared the police to be in Murphy’s pay, and no one dared
gainsay him.

Larkinwas released on bail (political liberty cannot be abolished at
one stroke). Larkin declared that he would appear at a meeting no matter
what happened. And indeed, he came to one disguised, and began to speak to
the crowd. The police recognised him, seized him and beat him up. For two
days the dictatorship of the police truncheon raged, crowds were clubbed,
women and children were brutally treated. The police broke into workers’
homes. A worker namedNolan, a member of the Transport Workers’
Union, was beaten to death. Another died of injuries.

OnThursday, September 4 (August 22, 0. S.), Nolan’s funeral took
place. The proletariat of Dublin followed in a procession 50,000 strong
behind the body of their comrade. The police brutes lay low, not daring to
annoy the crowd, and exemplary order prevailed. “This is a moremagnificent demonstration than when they buried Parnell” (the celebrated
Irish nationalist leader), said an old Irishman to a German correspondent.

TheDublin events mark a turning-point in the history of the labour
movement and of socialism in Ireland. Murphy has threatened to destroy the
Irish trade unions. He has succeeded only in destroying the last remnants
of the influence of the Irish nationalist bourgeoisie over, the Irish
proletariat. He has helped to steel the independent revolutionary
working-class movement in Ireland, which is free of nationalist prejudices.

Thiswas seen immediately at the Trades Union Congress which opened on
September 1 (August 19, 0. S.), in Manchester. The Dublin events inflamed
the delegates—despite the resistance of the opportunist trade union
leaders with their petty-bourgeois spirit and their admiration for the
bosses. The Dublin workers’ delegation was given an ovation. Delegate
Partridge, Chairman of the Dublin branch of the Engineers’ Union, spoke
about the abominable out rages committed by the police in Dublin. A young
working girl had just gone to bed when the police raided her house. The
girl hid in the closet, but was dragged out by the hair. The police were
drunk. These “men” (if one may call them such) beat up ten-year-old lads
and even five-year-old children!

Partridgewas twice arrested for making speeches which the judge
himself admitted were peaceful. “I am sure,” said Partridge, “that I
would now be arrested if I were to recite the Lord’s Prayer in public.”

TheManchester Congress sent a delegation to Dublin. The bourgeoisie
there again took up the weapon of nationalism (just like the bourgeois
nationalists in Poland, or in the Ukraine, or among the Jews!) declaring
that “Englishmen have no business on Irish soil!” But,fortunately, the nationalists have already lost their influence
over the
			       workers.[1]

Speechesdelivered at the Manchester Congress were of a kind that had
not been heard for a long time.A resolution was moved to transfer the whole Congress to Dublin, and to
organise a general strike throughout Britain. Smillie, the Chairman of the
Miners’ Union, stated that the Dublin methods would compel all British
workers to resort to revolution and that they would be able to learn the
use of arms.

Themasses of the British workers are slowly but surely taking a new
path—they are abandoning the defence of the petty privileges of the
labour aristocracy for their own great heroic struggle for a new system of
society. And once on this path the British proletariat, with their energy
and organisation, will bring socialism about more quickly and securely than
anywhere else.

[1]TheIrish nationalists are already expressing the fear that Larkin will
organise an independent Irish workers’ party, which will have to be
reckoned with in the first Irish national parliament.  —Lenin